


(Never) Let Me Go

by talesofstories



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, and Spike is an amazing kisser, because I don't write angst, but it's amazing what the closure of staking an evil ex will do for you, episode-compliant suicide attempt, feels and getting to a better place, it is possible Buffy is moving on too quickly here, it's very brief but you should know it's in there, just developing feelings and working through feelings for previous relationships, life is short, mentions of Drusilla Angel/Angelus Xander Willow Oz and Amy, pre-Buffy Summers/Spike
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 14:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20508800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofstories/pseuds/talesofstories
Summary: When Buffy stakes Angelus after defeating the Judge, life goes on as normal as possible for the Hellmouth. But then ghostly lovers show up at the school . . .(A pre-Spuffy second-half-of-season-2-rewrite fic centered around episode 2x19, "I Only Have Eyes for You," that also explores both before and after that episode. Because I have faith Buffy could have staked Angel at the end of "Innocence," but this episode was way too good to just disappear. Some dialogue from 2x19 and also 2x22. Warning for episode-compliant suicide attempt. It's very, very brief, only two sentences long, but take care of yourself, lovelies.)





	(Never) Let Me Go

When Buffy confronted Angel in a back corridor of the Sunnydale Mall after obliterating the Judge, she wavered. She just—he was the _love of her life_, and she had already _died_ for the world. What more could they ask of her? Could the world really expect her to kill him? She wasn’t ready.

And then words, painted in blood, flashed before her eyes: _Was it good for you too?_

Her mom—when the divorce was ramping up, when she had just learned that Hank had been sleeping with his office’s paralegal, when she had just learned how much he had put on their fucking credit cards to keep the paralegal’s interest—had dialed the best divorce lawyer in LA who didn’t exclusively work for starlets, all the while chanting under her breath about hell having no fury like a woman scorned. Joyce had thought Buffy was in her room studying, but Buffy had slipped into the bathroom to clean out the cuts given to her by a sickly yellow demon with seven clawed talons on each of its three hands, and she heard everything. Her mom put on a fake front for Buffy and pretended like it was just differences caused by growing apart that had separated them, but Buffy knew, at fifteen listening to her mom explain over the phone how much her normal, easy-going husband had hurt her, how easily love could be destroyed.

As Angel stood before her, mocking her for being unable to kill him, she thought of the devastation in her mom’s voice that day, of the blood on the hotel wall, and the fact that this would only get worse. She was Buffy, Vampire Slayer and Joyce Summers’s daughter, and with fire in her veins and ice in her heart, she thrust the stake into Angel’s heart with deadly precision. “Is this good for you, lover?” And Angel, the monster she had loved and who had tried to destroy her, exploded into dust as her words lingered in the air between where she stood and where he no longer existed.

* * *

(She spent a week in bed. She told her mom she was sick, she refused to answer the phone when Giles called, she cried and stared at the wall, and when Joyce crawled into her bed and asked her what was really going on, Buffy told her everything. Well, the parent-approved version of everything, which was that the guy she had liked had turned out to be a controlling asshole and that she had had an ugly public blowup with him and she’s so sorry she’s not strong like her mom is but she just couldn’t handle pretending she was all happy-Buffy and . . . and . . .

Joyce held her while she cried, told her that Buffy was just as strong as she was, that she was so proud of Buffy for standing up for herself, and that while she wished Buffy had told her sooner so she could have supported her from the beginning, she understood that some hurts had to be faced alone. They spent the weekend watching _Thelma and Louise_ and _Fried Green Tomatoes_, and Buffy went back to school on Monday.)

* * *

Spike would have maybe felt a bit of sadness over the loss of his grandsire—he hadn’t been joking when he said that Angelus had been his Yoda—except in the few days Angelus had spent soulless he had shagged Drusilla fourteen times and spent the rest of his time being an obnoxious prick. And honestly? After all the time Angelus had spent going on about how to kill this Slayer you had to love her? Good on her for doing the great poof in.

It didn’t help his mood that Drusilla, the moment she had felt that Angelus no longer existed, had begun a high-pitched keening—Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted, for they are no more. She had stumbled back to him from the site of their defeat, and it had taken the rest of the night for Spike to learn what had happened. Since then, she had stayed in their bed, where she and Angel had shagged in front of him for the final time before going out to destroy the world, refusing to get out of bed even to leave Sunnyhell. Which was fine for the moment as Spike couldn’t even sodding _drive_, but as his body healed, her constant weeping and gnashing of teeth got old, especially as Dru had somehow gotten it into her head that he was somehow at fault for the dusting of her sire even though he had been in the factory and not even around for the event, much to his disappointment.

Yeah, good on the Slayer for taking out Peaches. The chit deserved all the glory for that one.

* * *

Buffy couldn’t stop being the Slayer just because her heart had broken. Oz turned into a werewolf, Xander forced Amy to do a disastrous spell, and the flu took her out and gave her the opportunity her to take out a childhood demon. All this in addition to the vampires she slayed every night. As bright and sharp as grief could be, it couldn’t help but dull slowly under the mundane horrors of the Hellmouth.

Being the Chosen One: bad for a girl in a lot of ways—especially when it came to the lifespan of her clothes—but good in providing constant distractions to force her to get over grief. Much of which was, admittedly, caused by being the Chosen One. _Damn._

But between the weird things happening with couples around the school and Willow trying to convince her to get out there and date again, the handle Buffy had on her grief was being _tested_. Which meant that when she begged off an evening at the Bronze to watch _Casablanca _with her mom and she started weeping as Ilsa flew away from Rick—attached by necessity more firmly to her duty than to her love—she shouldn’t have been surprised. Clearly her mom wasn’t, as she immediately went into soothing comfort mode with no questions asked.

When her sobs had subsided to a few sniffles, Joyce spoke up: “If I get the ice cream, would you want to talk about it?”

Buffy glanced hopefully at her mom: “If I say no, do I still get ice cream?”

“Nice try, but no.”

Buffy could feel the smile on her face, tentative but real. “You drive a hard bargain.”

Joyce patted Buffy’s arm before getting up and heading into the kitchen. “That’s what makes me the mom” ringing out behind her. A few minutes later she came back, two bowls filled with chocolatey goodness. “Okay, honey, spill. Is it about that boy you were upset about a few weeks ago?”

Buffy spilled. “I thought he liked me, Mom. He came to my surprise birthday party, and I thought he had a good time and that I did everything right, and then he turned into such a jerk-face. And it’s gotta be my fault, right? Did I ask too much? Did I not do enough? Am I not the kind of girl that boys like?”

“Sweetie, listen to me: No matter what happened, it wasn’t your fault. How he chose to act was his fault. Even if every single member of his family died horribly after he left you the night of the party, how he chose to react and treat you was _his fault_. There is nothing you could have done to control his actions or change them or make him treat you better.”

The tears had started up again while Buffy had talked, but they slowly subsided as she listened to her mom’s earnest words. “Do you really believe that?”

Joyce sighed, her mouth twisted in a resigned smile as she tenderly tucked some hair behind Buffy’s ear. “Yes, sweetie, I do. Otherwise, how your father treated me would be my fault.”

Buffy gasped. “Mom! He cheated on you! There’s no way that’s your fault!”

“See? We can’t control others’ actions. It was that boy’s decision to treat you poorly. And it was Hank’s decision to wet his dick in his office’s entire secretarial pool.”

“Mom!” Buffy was horrified. God, “wet his dick”? Her dad? That was the worst thing her mom had ever said to her. She would need to bleach her brain.

Her mom’s smile turned slightly more real, the teasing smile of a mom who’d just done something to scandalize her teenage daughter, and Buffy suddenly couldn’t control her giggles. She snuggled up against her mom on the couch, wiping tears from her eyes and sniffling aggressively, and felt lighter than she had since that horrible day when Angelus had told her she wasn’t worth another go.

* * *

The truth? For all that the bats in her belfry were themselves a few sandwiches short of a picnic, Spike had loved Drusilla with the entirety of his undead heart for more than a century. Another truth? He was fed up with her unrelenting tears. It had been _weeks_ since Angelus had bit it, and Drusilla was going around mourning like she was bloody well paid to do it. He had tried every trick to jolly her out of it, even ones that had worked when Darla, the most unforgiving bitch he had ever met since Cecily caused him to embrace unlife with open arms, had forced Angelus out of the family once he went all soul-having. But with Angelus dusted, it was like Dru didn’t even see him anymore. And most of his tricks involved her acknowledging his presence.

Well, if he couldn’t fuck, feed, seduce, grovel, bribe, or torture his way into her appreciating him again, maybe he could do so by killing the Slayer.

* * *

It turned out that the weirdness haunting the couples at school was a pair of ghostly lovers in a squicky teacher–student forbidden romance. And of _course_ they had to do an exorcism. Because why not? The only way to get rid of a love turned sour and destructive was to hit it in the face with some creepy candles and some chanting. God, Buffy’s life was _rich_.

And then, of course, it didn’t work. Because not even magic could get rid of the regret and the pain, the heartbreak and the betrayal.

_As soon as this is over_, Buffy swore to herself as she raced out of her high school with wasps at her back and her friends by her side, _I’m figuring out how to become a nun_.

* * *

An hour after their escape from the high school, Buffy slipped away from a heated discussion between Xander, Willow, Cordelia, Giles, and Ms. Calendar. She needed to breathe, to not feel like the world and the people in it were suffocating her. She appreciated how passionate everyone was, how much they cared about saving the world, but when they were done bickering and going over details, they would turn to her for answers, answers she didn’t have. To be honest, Buffy had never had answers, but _fake it ’til you make it_ can be a mantra for everything from school presentations to getting out of being grounded to sex to slaying, and she had always been willing to assume the mantle of the Chosen One and make the hard decisions when necessary. But now? Now she couldn’t fake it. Couldn’t risk one more unthought-through decision obliterating her entire world.

She was standing in the kitchen trying to remember a breathing exercise when her fingers brushed the paper in her pocket. Buffy pulled it out, smoothed out the creases of the paper, and walked into the night. She didn’t stop until she was back in her school’s hallway, waiting for her dance partner.

* * *

“Fun fact about wasps: they have no taste for the undead.” Spike strolled into the school hallway behind Buffy and paused to appreciate the stiff line of the back of the warrior before him. It was a lucky break that he had been out and about in Sunnyhell just as she had walked into the school. She hadn’t seen him since dropping an organ on him, and he planned to savor her shock at learning he was still undead.

“You’re the only one, the only person I can talk to.”

Spike eyed the girl in front of him warily. “Right, Slayer. Are you on something?”

She whirled to face him, tears in her eyes: “You can’t make me disappear just because you say it’s over.”

Christ but he never knew what to do when a bird was crying. “Didn’t realize we had anything that could be considered over. Leastways, not with both of us still alive.”

As he tentatively approached her, praying to a God that had abandoned him a century ago that those tears would stay in her eyes and they could get on with the fighting like normal mortal enemies, he was hit with a whammy.

* * *

“I just want you to be able to have some kind of a normal life. We can never have that. Can’t you see?”

“I don’t give a damn about a normal life! I’m going crazy not seeing you. I think about you every minute.”

Spike’s hand reached up to caress Buffy’s check. “I know. But it’s over. It has to be.” He had to be the strong one. He had to walk away.

“Come back here!” She ran after him with the desperation of a shattering heart, grabbing Spike by the lapels of his duster and forcing him to face her. “We’re not finished. You don’t care anymore? Is that it?”

“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter what I feel.”

She shook him, tears falling unheeded down her cheeks. “Then tell me you don’t love me! Say it!”

Spike stared at her brokenly. “Is that what you need to hear? Will that help?” His own tears began raining down. “I don’t. I don’t. Now let me go.”

Buffy’s eyes flashed at his statement, before hardening with denial. “No. A person doesn’t just wake up and stop loving somebody.” She reached behind her back, pulling a pistol out from the waistband of her jeans. “Love is forever.” Her hands shook, but she forced herself to grit out another sentence. He had to _understand_: “I’m not afraid to use it, I swear. If I can’t be with you . . .”

“Oh my God.” Spike started backing away before turning and fleeing.

“Don’t walk away from me, bitch!”

Spike paused momentarily before doubling his speed, racing down the school hallway and throwing open a door that led outside. Buffy remained hot on his heels, crying after him, “Stop it! Stop it! Don’t make me!”

He was on a balcony, with nowhere else to go. Spike stopped, chest heaving. “All right, just . . .” He had no idea what to say as he turned slowly to face Buffy. “You know you don’t wanna do this. Let’s both just calm down.” He was begging her with his words, beseeching her with his eyes. “Now give me the gun.”

The hurt and fury swirling in her, a toxic miasma. “Don’t. Don’t do that, dammit. Don’t talk to me like I’m some stupid—”

The shot that rang out surprised Buffy as much as it did Spike. But unlike Spike, Buffy didn’t have a gaping hole spewing out blood in her chest. Spike looked up at Buffy from where his hand pressed, covered in blood, against the wound staining the dark T-shirt under the open flaps of his duster. “James,” he whispered brokenly. Then he fell off the balcony to the courtyard below.

* * *

Buffy stood there, staring at the space where her lover had stood for a moment. Then she turned and began her slow walk back to the music room where they had stolen a moment earlier that evening to dance together. She moved like she was wading through the ocean and fighting the current all the way, like every step brought her infinite pain and like she was beyond feeling anything. Once in the music room, she continued straight toward the record player. The moment she put the needle on, the song they had danced to warbled out into the dark. The Flamingoes began crooning, and she lifted the gun up, an inevitable arc leading toward the back of her head.

A hand grabbed hers, pushing the gun back down.

“Grace!” Buffy whirled around to face Spike.  
“Don’t do this,” he whispered, pleaded.

“But . . . but I killed you.”

“It was an accident. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It _is_ my fault. How could I—”

Spike raised his fingers to Buffy’s lips, ending her recriminations. “Hush. I’m the one who should be sorry, James. You thought I stopped loving you, but I never did. I loved you with my last breath. Shhhh. No more tears.”

He moved his hand away from her face to wrap his arm around her, pulling her close and leaning in for an all-consuming kiss. Buffy’s lips tasted of her tears, but she held him close in a possessive yet soft embrace, her warmth filling him with fire.

A tingling began in Spike’s limbs, lifting slowly as the whammy left him and he kept kissing the Slayer.

* * *

When the possession lifted, Buffy kissed Spike even more fiercely for a moment before drawing away with him with a ragged breath. Her eyes fluttered open to see him staring at her searchingly before he disentangled their limbs and strode away.

* * *

(_They always leave_ was her only thought as she watched him walk away with a steady, unhurried tread. And god, she had just gotten done being possessed and acting out a doomed love and lip-locking with a vampire; why was that her only thought after all of that?)

* * *

They found her in the music room. After hearing the bare bones of the story, Giles hustled her into his office before taking the gang to patrol the rest of the school, looking for Spike or minions or any remains from the doomed lovers. When they returned from their patrol—no baddies found, all’s well being called into the watches of the night—Giles went to talk to Buffy. “Are you feeling any better?”

She didn’t even look up at him, pondering the only thing that kept her mind off the softness of Spike’s lips and the agonized, yearning look in his eyes before he left: “James picked me. I guess . . . I guess I was the one he could relate to.” It wasn’t a surprise, not really, not with the way things had gone down with Angel. She had heaps of resentment piled up against him for needing a soul to love her and making her kill him. She had additional heaps piled up against herself for the impulsive decision that took her boyfriend away from her and found her, the morning after, in a lonely bed with a heart that would soon be broken. She even found the energy to have a few heaps left over to aim toward Ms. Calendar for knowing the risks and not mentioning it to anyone. Full of heaps these days, she was. “He was so sad.”

Giles sat next to her, and she turned her eyes to him. “Well, they can both rest now.”

“I still—” Buffy broke off, annoyed with how hard it was to put what was haunting her into words. “Part of me just doesn’t understand why she would forgive him.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. I guess not.”

* * *

(Spike’s lips were really soft, and he kissed with passion, more so even than Angel, and Angel had been in love with her. And it wasn’t just a result of the spell; if anything, his kiss had gotten even more toe-curlingly amazing after the dead lovers had left them.

_What must it be like_, Buffy wondered, _for Drusilla, having all that passion waiting for her? What was it like to have all that life and fire waiting for her in a world_—Buffy thought of a dark cave, dripping water, death in a shallow pool—_so often dark and dank? What must it be like to inspire a soulless man to love you, care for you, and not leave your side for more than a hundred years?_)

* * *

Spike detoured before going to check in on his sire. She hadn’t paid attention to him in weeks, but with the luck he’d had since stepping foot in Sunnyhell, she would manage to pay attention to him long enough to get brassed off at him for snogging the Slayer but not long enough to hear that some sodding spell made him do it.

But what a snog it had been. Light and heat and passion in those brief moments when they were no longer possessed and before they separated. Kissing Buffy was like kissing the sun—liquid fire that burned him through and left him breathless and aching for more. If kissing her was a revelation, holding her was a gift, one clearly meant for someone better than him but that he, demon after all, would take and treasure. And the fact that she had kept kissing him? That she had stayed in his arms? There had to be something at least a little bit wicked in the girl, enough to make her worth knowing and keeping. Enough worth driving a man batty for.

It was the best kiss he’d ever had. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

He couldn’t do much about the scent of her on his duster, which he could maybe explain away as a result of his previous run-ins with the girl, but after hunting down and eating some belligerent college student to speed up his healing, strong soap helped with doing away Buffy’s scent from where it clung to his skin. The cold shower took care of the rest of his problems after his extended . . . tête-à-tête with her. None of his precautions, however, made a lick of difference when he walked into the room where Drusilla had holed up. One look at Spike and she immediately started screeching that he tasted of ashes, that the sunshine had gotten to him and destroyed her wicked boy.

The irony could make a man sick. She could shag Peaches six ways from Sunday in front of his very eyes no less, but if Spike dared to so much as even kiss another girl while whammied out of his head by some _spell_ that led to him getting _shot_ on top of it all, _he_ was the tainted, dirty one who knew sod all about fidelity.

It was enough to make him want to heave. More than that, though, it was enough to make him want to do something drastic.

* * *

(It was enough to make him think that maybe, maybe Dru was right about him being filled with the Slayer’s light.)

* * *

He was smoking when a Jeep rolled up to the house. The woman in the Jeep got out, and Spike quickly stomped out his cigarette at the base of the tree he had been leaning against before rushing up to the woman, sweeping the bag of groceries perched precariously in her arms away from her.

“Oh! Umm, thank you.” Joyce looked at the man standing before her, eyes squinting slightly as if trying to identify him. Spike tossed on a smile he hoped was disarming in an effort to keep her from placing him. “Can I help you?”

It was his chance. The plan was to ask the Slayer’s mum to pass along the message to the Slayer that he and Dru were leaving Sunnydale. She would then know he was no longer a threat and could get along with shopping or flirting or whatever the hell other girly things the Slayer did in her free time. Spike had steadfastly refused to contemplate why he was being so considerate to leave the chit a message, but he was here and the plan was ready.

Except the Slayer always had a way with messing up his plans.

“Spike?” The voice came from the front porch. “What are you doing here?”

He turned to look at the Slayer, arms still full of groceries. Her hair was loose about her face; she wore casual track pants with a light jacket over a frilly white camisole, and Spike refused to acknowledge how good she looked with her hands on her hips, confused but clearly prepared to whale on him if he so much as looked in a threatening manner toward her mum.

“You know this boy, sweetie?” Joyce slammed the hatch on her Jeep closed, and walked past Buffy to the front door of the house. Spike mutely held out his arms full of groceries to Buffy, expecting her to take the bags out of his hands and send him on his merry way. Instead, Buffy went to the door and opened it for her mum before looking vaguely in the direction of his left elbow. “Those look heavy. Come in, Spike; you can drop them off in the kitchen while you tell me what you’re up to.”

Spike could feel his brain stop. She had invited him in. She knew what he was, and she had invited him in. She didn’t have to, and she had invited him in. She had no reason to trust him, and she had invited him in.

When Spike had been tiny William, he remembered going with his mum to church. He had walked into the stone building and stared in awe at the sweeping arches, the gorgeously colored stained glass, the warm wood of the pews. Everything in that church had been richly vibrant and awe-inspiring. He had felt small and unworthy as he crept in, as he sat surrounded by the poetry of the liturgy, but he had also felt that being there was making him just as hallowed as his surroundings.

His first step into the Summers’ home, slipping past the vanilla and coconut scent of the Slayer and keeping his eyes on the back of her mum as she walked to the kitchen, caused that exact same feeling to rush over him.

“Spike, why are you here?”

“Your name is Spike?” Joyce looked up at him from making room in the refrigerator.

A part of him wanted to tell the Slayer’s mum that it was because of the summer he spent killing fifty-seven people using railroad spikes. He had been angry that summer, and it had given him a name and the beginnings of a reputation. But bloody hell, she seemed like a decent lady. He couldn’t tell her that. “My real name’s William. But everyone calls me Spike.”

“Well, okay then, Spike. Could you set those bags on the counter?” Joyce nodded to indicate the spot where she wanted them, and he hurried to set them down. Turning, he looked back at the Slayer, who was watching him with curious eyes, head slightly tilted and teeth worrying her bottom lip. She had clearly decided he wasn’t a threat at the moment, and Spike had no idea how he felt about that.

“Spike? Here? Why are you?”

“Just wanted to let you know that me and Dru, we’re leaving town. Won’t have to worry about us anymore.”

Suspicion sparked in her eyes, but she didn’t move any closer. “That’s . . . awfully thoughtful of you.”

Spike rubbed the back of his neck, an unconscious embarrassed gesture he hoped the girl hadn’t picked up on. “Figure you’ve got enough on your plate without worrying about the two of us. Dru’s better, I’m better after some crazy woman dropped an organ on me and broke my back”—she at least had the decency to wince at that, even though she otherwise didn’t look apologetic at all—“and I’m sick of this town, so it’s time to be off.”

The Slayer’s mum was looking between them, clearly dying to know what they were talking about but also clearly deciding to wait to ask her daughter about it after he had left.

“Are you okay?” The Slayer’s voice drew him out of his perusal of her mum. That was an odd question for her to ask. Almost like . . . she cared. She wouldn’t look him in the eyes, instead determinedly eyeing the space near his left ear. Almost like she cared . . . and was embarrassed by it.

Perhaps he wasn’t the only one haunted by what the ghosts left behind when they disappeared.

Wasn’t that interesting?

“Are you okay?” He shot back.

“Me?” Buffy looked surprised, eyes widening as she stared at him, hazel flecked with sharper bits of emerald green and bright bits of amber gold. If he had a heart rate, he thought it would have ratcheted right up at the open look on her face. “I’m peachy. Peachy keen. A keen peach, even.”

Christ, she was adorab—a fierce warrior and a pain in his arse.

Who was now tapping her foot impatiently. “Well?”

“Well . . . ?” She raised an unimpressed eyebrow. He had to stop getting distracted while around her. At least he was getting distracted by her. Which wasn’t any better, now that he thought about it. What had then been talking about . . . ? “Right! Right. I’m fine.”

Buffy clearly had nothing to say in response to that, and the silence that settled around them was awkward. Or it felt like it should be awkward. He was too busy contemplating the way the light picked out different shades of blonde in Buffy’s hair to really notice.

Joyce coughed delicately.

“Right! Right. Best be off now. Told you what I came to say. Now it’s time for me to toddle off.” God, Spike couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. He sounded like a right git.

“I’ll . . . walk you to the door?”

There it was again, that hesitancy around him she had never had before. It was . . . interesting. Neat. Intriguing. Admittedly, she was using her words on him rather than her firsts, and that was also fairly new for them. Maybe the hesitancy was just her being uncomfortable with a new medium.

The Slayer walked ahead of him, opened the front door, and led him out onto the porch. Joyce followed, saying something about having left her purse in the car that caught just the barest of Spike’s attention before it was all focused again on the girl in front of him.

“Thanks for stopping by. Drive safe, wherever you’re going.”

“Was thinking South America. Dru’s been asking to go south for a while; might try to find a country with lots of spicy food while I’m at it.”

Buffy had led him off the porch, had opened her mouth as if she was going to say something and continue delaying the end of this conversation. Except from out of nowhere, a vamp came flying at her and tackled her, and all of a sudden the time for meaningless comments was gone. Buffy kicked the vamp off her, and Spike punched him a few time, the last one forcing the vamp back to where Buffy was ready to stake him. The vamp exploded in the usual cloud of dust and horrified sucking screech noise, leaving just Spike and the Slayer again.

“Buffy, what on earth was that? Did that man just explode?”

And the Slayer’s mum.

* * *

Spike still wasn’t sure how it had happened, how he found himself back in the Slayer’s house, this time in the living room while the Slayer tried explaining the world to her mum. He was kind of glad he was there, for the Slayer’s sake. He could be moral encouragement, at least. The tea the chit had plied him and his mother with wasn’t worth being called tea—he wasn’t sure whether that was due to the piss-poor quality of the leaves or due to the Slayer’s brewing skills—but it seemed to be calming her mum down.

“And you’re sure you’re the Slayer?”

“Yes, Mom, I’m sure.”

“And have you tried not being the Slayer?”

“Yes, Mom, twice now. Neither time worked. There’s always some big bad out there trying to destroy the world, and it’s my job to stop it. And apparently some vamps now like to show initiative and show up at the Slayer’s house rather than waiting at the cemeteries like they’re supposed to.” Under her exaggerated patience and dramatic pout was a line of wry annoyance, like the vampires were purposely going out of their way to make her life difficult. Which, Spike thought back to hiring the Order of Taraka to kill her, wouldn’t be the first time a vamp had done that. He liked to think he did it with more flair than a flying tackle out of the bushes though.

“And you’re sure that man was a vampire? That vampires are real?”

“Yes, Mom. They’re real. Spike’s one.”

Joyce turned to look at him.

“Go on, show her the—” Buffy waved her hand in front of her own face “—the bumpies.”

“Bumpies, Slayer? Do you have no respect? And what am I, your personal vamp performer?” For all his grumbling, Spike shifted into game face and trained amber eyes on Joyce. He could hear the lady’s panicked, racing heart, see her nervousness as she glanced between him and her daughter. She wet her lips, and Spike could see her deciding on her next question.

“How long have you known about this?”

“About Spike being a vampire? About five months. I met him in the fall. If you’re asking how long I’ve known about vampires, then it’s been two years. I was fifteen when I became the Slayer.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Buffy’s voice lost that edge of wry humor, instead becoming flat and hard: “I did tell you. You and Dad had me institutionalized.”

Spike stared at the girl in shock. The Slayer’s mum had locked her in a bleeding asylum? For being the Slayer? She dusted Lothos, and that was the thanks the bird got? He could feel a growl start to rumble in his chest, and he quickly forced it to stop. Between the asylum and Angelus, it was no wonder the chit was so wary; he didn’t need to add to it by making her think he was going to attack her or her mum in her living room.

Joyce was clearly grasping for something to say. Buffy looked at her, then looked at her hands before standing abruptly. “I need some tea,” she announced in that weirdly flat, hard voice before walking into the kitchen, leaving Spike and Joyce alone in uncomfortable silence.

As the sounds of a kettle being filled came from the kitchen—the Slayer had clearly decided to take as long as possible to make her drink, not that he blamed her—Joyce turned to him. “Have we met?”

“Um . . . “ Spike frantically tried to think up an excuse—bad enough the lady knew he was a vampire without her realizing he’d threatened her daughter—before deciding just to bugger it and tell the truth. “You hit me with an ax one time, remember? Uh, ‘Get the hell away from my daughter.’”

“Oh.” Joyce didn’t look shocked by this news, but then, she had already been shocked enough that night that nothing more would probably faze the woman. “You’re not trying to kill her now?”

Spike sighed, losing his vamp face. “Don’t right feel like getting hit over the head with an ax again. Or getting an organ dropped on me again. Or whatever else you chits think of. You Summers women aren’t worth the headache of trying to kill.”

The quiet reigned again, until Buffy came back, hands full with a steaming mug of tea. She sat down, completely ignoring the tea as she steeled herself to speak again. “Look, Mom, I know this is all weird and wiggy, but I need you to support me. I would kill to be a normal girl—to be focused on boys and my friends and god, even homework—but I’m not that girl. Not anymore. And I know it’s hard and you have questions, but this is who I am. And I can’t change it or stop it or make it be something else. I’ve tried; it hasn’t worked, and people have been hurt. But I just—I just need you to love me. And to support me. Because it’s who I am. I’m Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, chosen girl out of all the others, but I’m still your daughter.”

When the tears started, Spike made his escape. He was _evil_. It was bad enough he’d stayed to chat with Buffy and Joyce, stayed to make sure the Slayer was okay; if he stayed around for the waterworks as well, he would lose all his rights to claiming he was evil.

* * *

(He had to knock Dru out to get her into the DeSoto and out of town. Which probably slightly increased his evil street cred; the good guys don’t kidnap their own girlfriends, proving again that it was far more interesting to be bad.

As he left Sunnydale behind in the dust, he tried not to think about how he would much rather not have to kidnap his girlfriend to make sure she went where he went.)

* * *

The summer after she dusted Angelus was hot and heavy with the oppressive ozone of a storm that never came. After Spike and Drusilla had left town, the rest of the school year had been quiet. Some demons had tried to raise another demon that would supposedly draw the world into hell, but Buffy had gotten more sword practice in and skewered the lead demon to the statue and that had been it. Buffy hadn’t died and she hadn’t had to kill anyone she had once loved, so for all that Giles emphasized how terrible things could have been if she hadn’t been able to stop the baddies, the apocalypse-that-wasn’t felt fairly anticlimactic in comparison to the last two years.

The summer, though, was even deader. Yet it felt more ominous. Or like something was waiting to happen—the moments between slipping into her seat next to her dad and waiting for the Ice Capades to begin. Buffy couldn’t put it into words and so she couldn’t really ask anyone else about it, but she also didn’t think that anyone else in her life felt it. At least, no one else was looking at everyone else askance, sitting on the edge of every seat, and unwilling to make a plan for two hours from now, let alone the weekend. But it was there, she could tell: crackling with heat and promise and change, an almost ripe nectarine that’s scent would demand you eat it the moment it was ready.

She tried not to think about the last time someone had said “ripe” in her presence.

* * *

(The summer after his dusting, Buffy had taken to calling him “Angelus” in her head, the only place where she talked about her ex-boyfriend. She had started to feel guilty about dusting him—memories of blood on a wall fading under the weight of loneliness—and so had grabbed desperately for the Watchers’ diaries that recorded her former love. The stories she had ignored when Giles first tried telling her them and additional stories he clearly hadn’t read yet rang out with clear warnings when there were no longer sad eyes to dream about. And the stories they told of a vampire who liked to cling to the shadows, step out of the shadows briefly, and then retreat again while circling ever closer as a way to torture his victims—often girls between fourteen and eighteen, often blondes—resonated uncomfortably with how he had wooed her. It was during a beach day when she was lying in the sun reading the writings of a nineteenth-century Watcher who had learned of who Angelus was pre-Angelus—when he was Liam and whoring and brawling his way through all the pubs of Ireland—that she had realized that maybe the soul didn’t make all that much of a difference. Yeah, it kept Angelus from killing anyone, but it didn’t seem to make much of an impact on how he otherwise interacted with the world. So he had stalked only one girl after the soul; it was still creepy and a crime. And he had still never been around but never gone long enough for her to forget him, he had still been cryptic and confusing, he had still made her think only of him, he had still taken what he wanted and then left.

So yeah, he was firmly Angelus in her head now, and the perpetual awkwardness her friends and Watcher felt around the topic of her ex—whether it was over the fact that he died evil, how he had lost his soul, or that Buffy had been the one who had had to kill him—and their resulting refusal to mention him meant that she never had a chance to discuss the new-old moniker or the things she had come to realize about him. It meant that she never got a chance to consider aloud that while most vamps were focused on their next meal and some were truly evil and bent on destroying the world, perhaps some—_Spike helping her mom carry groceries into the house_—were more human than some humans.)

* * *

After the fifth bloke Spike caught Dru cheating on him with, he decided to get really, really pissed. When he was alive, he hadn’t spent any concerted time finding his way to the bottom of one bottle and out the top of the next, but Angelus had, and he’d told Spike that it took a lot more for a vamp to get and stay drunk than it took a human. Normally, Spike figured it wasn’t worth the effort for more than a night, but that was before the sight of Dru humping the lap of a chaos demon had been burned into his retinas. A solid week without even a hint of sobriety, he figured, would be the trick.

The end of that solid week saw him with the hangover of the century, the same bruised heart he had begun the week with, and the beginnings of what was probably a shite plan, even by the standards he held his plans to.

In the last hundred-plus years, there had only been one woman other than his sire who had been able to make him feel. And unlike his sire, it seemed as though there was a very good chance he made her feel as well. He could go see if there was anything there, even if anything was just friendship. Maybe she would kick him out of town on his arse, maybe she wouldn’t care enough about him to even do that much, but all a man could do was try, right?

* * *

The tingles indicating “vampire” were moving toward her, but the usual danger signal that accompanied them was silent. Buffy allowed the vampire to get closer before she turned around, stake at the ready and face masked in a careful nonchalance. When she saw the blue eyes, bleached hair, and black duster of the vamp in front of her, she couldn’t help the smile that broke out. His eyes twinkled as his own grin burst forth.

“Hello, cutie.”


End file.
